#219 – Parking Tickets! Or, A New Feature Is Introduced and Things Take a Dark Turn

REGULAR readers to this blog know that I often refer to Los Angeles as a filthy toilet. “Ha ha,” you might laugh. “Oh, that Ted…!”

Here’s the thing though: No, it is. I really do loathe this city. And to quickly deflect and/or ignore the obvious question of “Then why the hell do you live there?!” I hereby offer up something new – a fun little bit I call…

Why “857”…? Well, I’m not going to write these all at once, and I didn’t want to go with something ridiculously low like “500” because then what happens when I reach 501, right?

I’d been hoping to launch [industry term] this feature for a while, but I needed just the right reason to get started. Something that really set me off.

Thank you City of Los Angeles Parking Enforcement Officer Dickwad for giving me that inspiration.

So what happened exactly?

Eh…I, uh, didn’t put money in a parking meter and I got a ticket.

Now listen: I’ve parked on this street dozens of times and always fed the meter. Last night, however, it just didn’t occur to me that I had to worry about it. It was way past six o’clock on a Saturday. I just assumed we were beyond ticketing time.

Turns out metered parking is enforced on this particular street six days a week, Saturday included, until 8pm. Oops.

Hey, now I know, right?

Here in the Valley – not in the middle of Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard where street parking is almost always impossible – here in the Valley, in Canoga Freaking Park, where I pulled up in front of – yes, folks, have a good laugh! – a Goodwill in a low-income part of town (in what is largely a lower-income community itself), on a block with plenty of empty metered spaces, it seems to me that perhaps – just perhaps! – sixty-expletive-deleted-three dollars is a tad on the high side.

Ah, City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation, still stinging over the “Gold Card” scandal of last year. Most cities count on some money generated by parking ticket penalties. Our mismanaged, misgoverned city is doing its best to stave off bankruptcy and apparently generate its entire bloated annual budget by robbing its citizens via crazy parking violation fees.

So while I certainly don’t agree with the ludicrously high cost of a parking ticket that I’d have avoided by dropping a damn quarter in the meter, at least I do understand it.

And so I’m proud to debut this new feature and announce #219 – Ridiculously Expensive Parking Tickets as the first in our non-sequential, arbitrarily-numbered 857 Reasons to Get The Hell Out of the Filthy Toilet That Is Los Angeles.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to check the Dumpster behind Sizzler for a few unwashed gallon ranch dressing jugs and start counting out 6,300 of these guys.